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November 15, 2006

GTD and Google Tools

I've been playing around recently with ways of setting up a GTD system with Google tools. I thought it would be useful to pass along since there is some interesting application here. I'm also a big Google fan, so I like finding ways to make their tools even more useful for people.

I setup a sample Google Personalized Home page with 6 key tabs:

google home.jpg

Here's what I've put under each tab:

Actions - I added 6 Google "Gadgets" for To-Do's. If you do a search in the Google Gadget Library, the one I like best is the one called "To-Do List" by Matt McCarthy. I chose this one because it seemed the easiest to add and complete tasks.

Mail - A gadget for Google mail goes under here.

Projects and Someday - I also used the To-Do List gadget to track Project and Someday/Maybe lists.

Notebook - A gadget for the Google Notebook. A great place for project notes, meeting notes, checklists and key reference.

Agendas - I found the "Sticky Note" gadget by Sophia B. useful for setting up Agenda lists for key people. You could also certainly use the To-Do List one for these or the Sticky Notes one for Actions, depending on which one you like better.

Calendar - a gadget for the Google Calendar.

I've also played around with using Google Spreadsheet to also track Projects and Actions. Some people find that tool more useful and like the collaboration and sharing features. If you try this option, I would suggest making a separate worksheet tab for each of the context lists.

For Google Mail, I've been testing out a pretty straightforward approach. I created two key pending lables:
@Actions and @Waiting For

....then a label for each current project. When processing mail, if something is actionable or waiting, it gets either the @Action or @Waiting label as well as the Project label if it's related to a current project. Every email gets archived after it gets labeled to maintain zero in the Inbox (because it takes less effort to work from a place of zero in the Inbox than to keep anything in the Inbox as your only reminder.) For non-actionable stuff that needs to be saved, it simply gets archived.

I know Google search is excellent. And for that reason, some may find the Project label an unnecessary extra step for them and searching through Archive is suffice. This is probably one of those personal preference things. I'm one of those people that likes being able to see emails by topic at the click of a button. Also, I have found that any search tool is only as good as the keyword I'm searching on and it's possible the word I'm searching on is not in any email, so for that reason I find that Project labels are handy for current projects.

Curious to hear from Google users on what's worked for you.

Posted by Kelly at November 15, 2006 12:14 PM

Comments

If you use Firefox to view Gmail, try GTDGmail. It is much easier than customizing a Google homepage unless you switch between browsers.

http://www.gtdgmail.com/

Posted by: Adrienne at November 15, 2006 02:59 PM

Kelly - take a look at this...http://www.gtdgmail.com/ it's pretty neat.

Posted by: Chris at November 15, 2006 07:00 PM

Thanks so much for this overview of Google tools, Kelly! You gave me a lot of great ideas for my own setup.

I have to say that I prefer Google docs over Google notebooks--Google notebooks feel very unwieldy to me, and I don't especially like the presentation.

I think that it's important to keep on top of the tools that are available to us, and I'm glad that you're exploring Google.

Posted by: Shelley at November 18, 2006 03:26 PM

kelly, spread the word.

GTD needs thebrain.com. when i cant use this program, my life is like shut down. down to less than a 10th of a life.

Posted by: Charles W DeFoor III at November 19, 2006 11:10 AM

I use the labeling system you describe for email, but use GMail and Notebook as the entire system by using the Star function to mark next actions. That way, an email that needs action can be starred, labeled by project and context, then archived so my inbox is at zero. When I am ready to do actions at the computer, I check the starred list. Any other tasks for a project I just email myself, putting the task in the subject header.

I can print the starred list to take with me when I'm away from the computer, and for collection away from the computer, I text thoughts, notes, and dreams to my email account, for immediate processing when I'm back at the computer at home or at school.

Google Notebook is a good place to put project lists and responsibilities - print the list out, sit down at your email, and you can do a great review.

Posted by: Matt at December 11, 2006 07:18 AM

Agree with those above that referred you and any readers to GTDGmail.com.

It is an incredible implementation of the GTD system into GMail. No, I don't get anything from them for spreading the word.

Posted by: Tim at December 11, 2006 11:05 AM

Another guide to using Google tools for GTD is at http://starkos.industriousone.com/gettings-things-done-google.

I like your idea of customizing a homepage, I'll have to give that a try. Though keeping a couple of tabs up in Firefox might allows faster switching?

Posted by: Starkos at February 9, 2007 06:41 AM

Thanks Starkos for the great info on your site about implementing GTD with Google. I played around more with setting up GTD in Google Notebook and found it quite handy for managing lists.

I setup 4 separate notebooks:

PROJECTS
ACTIONS
SOMEDAY
AGENDAS

As you can tell, I love playing around with this stuff. Thanks to all of you for your comments and contributions.

Kelly

Posted by: Kelly at February 13, 2007 03:36 PM

this is SO helpful. I feel like infinitely refreshed, alert, clear and alive having started using GTD in physical actions and projects as well as comptuer (electronic place). It feels like a "brain clarification cleansing" thing (the good kind though). energy and focus and productivity have skyrocketed, along with awareness. BIG BIG BIG question though, what's the best way to wire a GTD system to a phone with a mac computer sync?? I've considered stuff like Blackberry's ideamatrix (but a bit pricey), the iPhone would be easy syncing with mac, but I don't like touch screen. Just logging into the phone web browser and accessing a GTDGmail or iGoogle homepage with Google NoteBook could be really cool (but again, that might be slow). Trying to find the best, fastest, most comprehensive, and leas expensive method for syncing up EVERYTHING to a quality phone and a mac. Doing everything via Google might be the ticket, but wondering if a simple way to syn iCal and some files to a phone like blackberry.

Posted by: John Kooz Kuczmarski at January 19, 2008 12:15 PM

I am using http://www.taskwriter.com integrated with gmail. OK, it's not really an integration, but I always paste gmail URLs into the task description field in taskwriter. I have always at my have all the emails I need when I work on a task.

Posted by: Vio at July 2, 2008 03:11 PM